SpaceX launches the 11th test flight of its mega Starship rocket with another win

SpaceX launched another of its mammoth Starship rockets on a test flight Monday successfully making it halfway around the world while releasing mock satellites like last time Starship the biggest and the majority powerful rocket ever built thundered into the evening sky from the southern tip of Texas The booster peeled away and made a controlled entry into the Gulf of Mexico as planned with the spacecraft skimming space before descending into the Indian Ocean Nothing was recovered Hey welcome back to Earth Starship SpaceX s Dan Huot stated as employees cheered What a day It was the th test flight for a full-scale Starship which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk intends to use to send people to Mars NASA s need is more immediate The space agency cannot land astronauts on the moon by decade s end without the -foot -meter Starship the reusable car meant to get them from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up Instead of remaining inside Launch Control as usual Musk reported that for the first time he was going outside to watch much more visceral The previous test flight in August a success after a string of explosive failures followed a similar path with similar goals More maneuvering was built in this time especially for the spacecraft SpaceX conducted a series of tests during the spacecraft s entry over the Indian Ocean as practice for future landings back at the launch site Like before Starship carried up eight mock satellites mimicking SpaceX s Starlinks The entire flight lasted just over an hour originating from Starbase near the Mexican boundary NASA s acting administrator Sean Duffy praised Starship s progress Another major step toward landing Americans on the moon s south pole he noted via X SpaceX is modifying its Cape Canaveral launch sites to accommodate Starships in addition to the much smaller Falcon rockets used to carriage astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station for NASA